The primary reason that clean fluid fuel production other than from petroleum and natural gas has not been commercialized to date is that an economical process has not been developed to convert more abundant and less costly multi-solid fuels into clean fluid fuels. However, an integrated process for converting multi-solid fuels economically into clean gaseous and liquid fuels is described herein.
In the prior art, high capital and operating costs have not justified the commercialization of municipal, industrial, and agricultural solid waste conversion to clean liquid and gaseous fuels. The maintenance costs in shredding and/or hammer-milling the contained inorganics have been excessive relative to the value of the raw solid waste feed stocks. The environmental problems posed by such conversion have been complex and intractable. Finally, with specific reference to prior art coal conversion processes, the cost of the necessary treating reagent solid wastes disposal system have been intolerable.
Moreover, mere disposal of such solid wastes has become a problem. Atmospheric incineration has been very inefficient because of the high water content of the solid wastes and because of excessive toxic emissions unless costly scrubbers have been used. Land filling of solid wastes has become increasingly less feasible in many areas because the leaking of water pollutants could become a serious problem to future generations.